How many people here are interested in Unity?

Najdorf Wrote:I think before a student spends $250 for a dev tool, he must have made at least $1000 from his shareware to justify the investment, so that he is confident that he can make some profits with games, and the increase in productivity obtained with the engine is justified. For the hobbyists it's a big expense. For firms that have a good grip of the market, it's a deal.

I think the problem with this philosophy is that it's focused on money. If you are looking to make money, a job at a fast food restaurant is going to get you more money than a lower quality shareware game by a long shot... So then it just depends on what else is important to you.

I'm not really worried about having a savings, I just want to wait until I have a little extra cash. I'm also not worried too much about having some big return from the games I make. Yes my goal is to make games as a living, but that's all going to come in later years.

Unity (from what I've seen it do in the demo) is really cool. I am interested in my own engine, but for now I think Unity could easily do everything I want to make a game so who knows. I may be an owner of this come Christmas time .

Unity looks really cool and I really want to like it, but there are a few things that bug me:

---
The demos I've tried in the web player crash - always - either they run for a bit and freeze for seconds at a time (seems physics related) and/or the display just draws garbage. Not a good first impression, but I'm willing to write these off as temporary initial-release issues. Gooball seems to run OK at least...

---
They claim to have "the most advanced lighting system you'll touch for a few years" but AFAICT, there's no support for shadows (real-time or otherwise). Sorry, but there are many situations where I'd "settle for static lightmaps" rather than try to fake shadows with cookies

---
There's no mention of any culling methods. I'm sure (or at least I hope) they do at least frustum culling on whole meshes/groups but what about big/world meshes? Are there any built-in visibility schemes? Octrees? PVS?

---
I downloaded the demo, but I wasn't comfortable installing it after peeking inside the package. There's too much crap going into sensitive parts of the system for my liking, and Installer.app complains that "The chosen volume contains software which is newer then the software you are installing" the first time the mpkg is run - Huh? I might not mind all that if I bought the retail version, but a demo should be drag-and-drop or at least provide a thorough and obvious uninstaller.

---
It seems there's no real built-in Networking (i.e. you gotta write it in C#).

---
Then there's this on the front page: "... put the cat in the microwave and cook up a game." Wha?

The pricing looks reasonable for what they're offering (well, the introductory rates at least) and I can see how this is more attractive than something like Torque for artists, but for programmers and/or a team Torque may offer more out of the box, for less money. I also have some reservations about what's left out of the "Indie" version, i.e. no render-to-texture, or as they put it: "sweet graphics FX" - Come on!

Dark Helmet Wrote:I agree that it does look quite nice, but 250? Pro for 1000? Torque sells for 100! Dim3 is free! Truly unless you are going to sell stuff with it, and probably plan on making multiple games, that might be a bit much for everyone. (unless you get a free liscene)

a note:
torque for $100 is a waste of time and money and has been repeatedly said so. Do your research first.
as for dim3, yes it is free, but I doubt it has the tools/ease of use that Unity has.

@Aarku: I am currently finishing up another project. I have unity sitting on my machine (I update with every new version that comes out) and have tinkered with it a bit. Personally I'm waiting for my other project to finish before I go deeper into unity, in fear that I might be fully drawn in and not want to finish my previous project.

FrankC: Yeah, I never installed the Unity Demo either for the same reason. A .pkg for anything other than a commercial program scares me. (For good reason too, you ever looked at what people put in those things?) That and I can't get the web player to work anymore. It just crashes Safari every time, after I looked at only one example.

I think I'll wait until I have the time and resources to make a 3D game. I have no intention to learn 3D modeling myself, so unless I find someone or a group interested I'm a bit at a loss what I would do with Unity.

Quote:I think the problem with this philosophy is that it's focused on money. If you are looking to make money, a job at a fast food restaurant is going to get you more money than a lower quality shareware game by a long shot... So then it just depends on what else is important to you.

250$ are quite a bit of money IMO. I would not feel justified buying it if I didn't hope to get some return from it, given the free alternatives. But obviously this is just an opinion, and I'm not used to buying much software (the only software I remember buying recenly are TNT Basic and Blitzmax...)

Najdorf Wrote:250$ are quite a bit of money IMO. I would not feel justified buying it if I didn't hope to get some return from it, given the free alternatives. But obviously this is just an opinion, and I'm not used to buying much software (the only software I remember buying recenly are TNT Basic and Blitzmax...)

I don't mean to be picky, but there are a few alternate perspectives.

1) Anyone can learn to play the guitar on a cheap/free, old, beat-up acoustic. If that acoustic gives the learner enough headache, though, they'll simply give up. Same thing with an out-of-tune piano. And I'd argue same with doing all the nuts and bolts of a game engine first time out.

2) The money goes to overcoming many basic steps you'd have to learn about and solve with other dev tools. This saves a lot of time and frustration.

I'm the kind of guy likes to build everything from scratch, so Unity really isn't something I'd see myself using to create games. That said, I still think Unity is freakin' awesome... it's just not something that I would personally make use of.

skyhawk Wrote:a note:
torque for $100 is a waste of time and money and has been repeatedly said so. Do your research first.
as for dim3, yes it is free, but I doubt it has the tools/ease of use that Unity has.

Skyhawk, can you tell me in your opinion where the tools fail in comparison? I'm always looking to improve, and I want to be the best tool, so all comments are welcome. If there's somewhere that the unity folks are doing better than me and I could learn something from, I'd be happy to hear.

I see that as a feature in Unity's favor... because then artists can use about whatever they want and export to FBX and whatever else. I think it makes sense to leave it to the 3D apps.

As for things wrong with dim3... off the top of my head in rant form... The web page looks circa mid '90s (where's the whitepaper or something similar? I have to crawl through gigantic png screenshots.) The engine doesn't seem general purpose. (You can attach scripts to weapons and projectiles for instance? That seems extremely specific.) Dim3 is as you say, made for Modders. Unity is made for people who want to make games. I think they are trying to be different things. Dim3 isn't proven. (Is there anything released with it? I certainly wouldn't know from the website) You can script more than just your specific game stuff with Unity. You have access to the entirety of .NET! You've got a lot of power sitting there... it is really nice so far and there is lots of documentation and help online. You aren't limited to JavaScript. (Which is a fine language, I guess, but I love having both C# and JavaScript wherever I want) Unity will be able deploy to Windows very soon. That's huge. I don't know about dim3's workflow... it's not on the site... but Unity's is damn slick. It's saving me a lot of time, I know it.

That said, dim3's got shadows. You can do shadows with the Projector component (see the character shadow in Gooball) but not general purpose "click here for the object to cast a shadow"... yet. I'm also wondering about your bumpmapping and whether or not you have to provide your own normalmap, but that's offtopic. (You can generate normalmaps right in Unity)

Having played with both Unity and Dim3, one thing that I REALLY like about Unity is I can build a model for a room, building, or a full city right in my 3D program of choice (C4D) and import it right into the engine and use it right off the bat. You do not need to use a special editor to build your levels or maps or whatever you want to call them.

Skorche Wrote:FrankC: Yeah, I never installed the Unity Demo either for the same reason. A .pkg for anything other than a commercial program scares me. (For good reason too, you ever looked at what people put in those things?) That and I can't get the web player to work anymore. It just crashes Safari every time, after I looked at only one example.

I think I'll wait until I have the time and resources to make a 3D game. I have no intention to learn 3D modeling myself, so unless I find someone or a group interested I'm a bit at a loss what I would do with Unity.

Very cool though.

You can always look at what the installer is installing. File -> Show Files. The Interlok copy protection is the only reason the installer isn't drag and drop. It doesn't seem that bad, either, and you can see where to get rid of it if you don't want it anymore. The copy protection hasn't gotten in my way at all so far. It's pretty proven, used in some big name existing commercial apps.

Najdorf Wrote:True, true... I bought these basics about for the same reason... still $250 is a lot. And $400 will be even more... I dont think this is intended for amateurs, more for medium-large sized devs.

There could be a cheaper version (80$?) to do only free games or something.

I think it's well within the reach of about anyone. I remember saving up and buying Bryce 2 when that came out just to play around with when I was a kid. I never made any money with it, but I don't regret doing it. I learned a lot about 3D programs and had a lot of fun using it. I see that similar to something like Unity.

I don't think they are going to change their prices or licensing any time soon because that would certainly shake many people's trust in them. "So I bought this for $250 last week, and now you're telling me it's $80!" That's just horrible business.

Man, I bet Novodex itself is worth more than $250. Has anyone ever contacted Ageia inquiring about how much it is? Just curious. In the early beta tests, Unity used ODE. There was a big difference in physics stability and speed when they switched. Me likey. Ride the walrus. ;-)

Sometimes I feel like a Unity pimp. Then I remember I'm not making anything up.